Australia changes Prime Minister (again)

Australia's new Prime Minister is Scott Morrison, following the ousting of Malcolm Turnbull by his own Liberal party.

Politics in the Liberal Party has been in turmoil this week following a challenge to Turnbull's leadership by a right-wing conservative faction in the party. That faction put up Peter Dutton, a minister in government, as challenger to Turnbull. Turnbull called for a party-room vote a couple of days ago, pre-empting a forced vote, and won by a narrow margin of 48 to 35. However, today the issue was brought to a second, forced, vote.

Turnbull refused to contest this ballot. Instead, three people nominated: Dutton, Turnbull's Deputy Prime-Minister Julie Bishop (also Australia's Foreign Minister), and Treasurer Scott Morrison. Bishop was knocked out in the first round of voting, and Morrison was voted leader (and therefore Prime Minister) by 45 votes to 40 over Dutton.

The fallout from this will be interesting. In recent years, Australia has had several changes of Prime Ministers during their time in office, rather as a result of popular elections. The fact that this change has happened at all will likely be unpopular with the electors. But it also shows a fundamental ideological split in the Liberal Party, between conservatives on the Right and moderates who are closer to the centre. The Right has been discontented with Turnbull's leadership for a long time now - in some cases since he ousted former conservative Prime Minister Tony Abbott.

Morrison, as a compromise candidate, does not really have blood on his hands over the ousting of Turnbull. He is more conservative that Turnbull, but still faces an uphill battle to try to reunite his fractured party and to convince the the public that the Liberal-National coalition remains the best choice to govern the country.

There will be a general election next year. If polling is to be believed, it's looking very likely that Australia will put the Liberals out of office and elect a Labor government.

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Well stated.Extending:
Regardless of leadership issues, the demands presented by climate change will be ongoing and increasingly pervasive. The past 5 (or was it 6) Prime ministers have all failed in their attempts to present an organised approach to global warming and due to intense denialist lobying failed to support those attempts and being thrown out of office by their own party as a result.

On top of this, there is the global trend to more authoritarian right wing leadership, perhaps as a fear based reaction to a world apparently slipping further into the chaos inspired by climate change, end times paranoia.
A trend perhaps due in a signifcant part, to the fear based popular need for strong leadership that people may consider rightly or wrongly more likely available from right wing, nationalist ideologies.

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Now all we need is for the opposition left wing political party to oust it's right wing leader and Australian federal politics can become normal again.

It's not surprising that the left wing opposition party has missed out on government in the past 2 federal elections through gaining woeful first preference votes at elections not seen for over 70 years. The current opposition leader did a deal with a large employer when he was a union boss and traded a 2 cent per hour pay rise for minimum wage cleaners to gain a $40K kickback to employ someone so he could get elected.

There is a third option, a hung parliament, if the 1/3 of disaffected voters elect minority party candidates.

What we saw this week was the far right attempt a coup of a democratically elected government.

And they partially succeeded.

I never thought I would ever, in my entire life, say thank christ Scott Morrison won.

Ever!

Because the alternative would have been Dutton and then when he was rolled, Abbott, because it is as clear as day that Abbott was getting Dutton to do the dirty work before he rolled him as well.

The fact that they lost the first spill 48 to 35 and they still tried again, without being able to give an actual reason as to why, and now suddenly they have lost again and they are claiming they will unite after a 40 to 45 split? Really?

Who the hell do Tony "we must take back the Government" Abbott and Dutton think they are fooling?

IT’S the question the Liberal party has been not-so-artfully dodging all day: why did they dump Malcolm Turnbull?

Of all the party members invited to appear on ABC’s 7.30, Minister for Social Services Dan Tehan was the only one who accepted.

But he refused to address the elephant in the room.

“Can you explain to the hundreds of thousands of Australian voters, watching this program tonight, why your party had to dump Malcolm Turnbull?” asked 7.30 host Leigh Sales.

“Well, in the end our party room has decided that they want a new generation of leaders. They have elected Scott Morrison to be our new Prime Minister and Josh Frydenberg to be our new deputy leader,” replied Mr Tehan.

Sales: “And why?”

Tehan: “Well, because that’s what they’ve decided to do and our focus now -’

“Because that is what the party room has decided to do and the reason they’ve decided to do that is because they want a new generation of leaders who can focus on the Australian people,” responded Mr Tehan, again avoiding the question.

“Make sure that between now and the election that is all we are seeking to do is to govern for them, to hear what their concerns are, what their needs are and make sure that our focus remains on them.”

He denied Mr Turnbull wasn’t doing these things, but repeatedly only spoke of a “new generation of leaders” when asked why the prime minister was axed.

When asked whether the 45-40 split between Scott Morrison and Peter Dutton represented a lack of party unity, Mr Tehan insisted they were united.

But his reasoning for the split in the first place?

That we may never know.​

The only silver lining for those of us on the left is that the far right and the Liberal Party have just demonstrated just how incompetent they are.

The next election will hopefully be a blood bath and the far right pay the price.

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we can only hope I guess...
However I would not be surprised that the far right will continue to gain support due to the natural tendency for a scared population to seek authoritarian ultra nationalist leadership during times of ongoing crisis.

Energy security, immigration, refugees, climate change, drought, Barrier reef degradation etc all seriously scary issues, tend to promote support further towards the right as people seek what they may perceive as stronger leadership.

But the amateurish, ham-fisted, thuggish attempts by Dutton’s backers to bully MPs into signing the petition in those few frenzied hours of craziness inside Parliament House on Wednesday night had changed things.

I saw two female Liberal MPs in tears along the corridors. I wrongly assumed they were lamenting the imminent assassination of yet another prime minister. It wasn’t until I spoke with them on Thursday that I understood what had really happened.

They’d been sobbing in shock and disgust at the threats and intimidation they’d been subjected to by the goons and knuckledraggers trying to gather the signatures on Dutton’s behalf.

One of them purports to be a conservative family man of traditional Christian values. To those women now, he is just a pig. They won’t forget what happened on Wednesday night. And they are privately telling their colleagues to ensure everyone knows exactly what went on.​

What needs to happen now is the exposure of these goons. Whether that happens though, remains to be seen. They won't out them. They are so desperate to win the next election, that they will not out the abusers so that voters can make up their own minds as to whether they do vote for these people. Which causes even more issues for the Liberal Party from here on in. The silence about this, amounts to protecting these people, for the sake of winning.

Labor has to use this and hammer it home to voters that the Liberal Party is protecting thugs that threatened and intimidated the women in their own party in their attempted coup. These men have to be outed.

However I would not be surprised that the far right will continue to gain support due to the natural tendency for a scared population to seek authoritarian ultra nationalist leadership during times of ongoing crisis.

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I do not know if they will continue to gain traction.

After this past week, they outed themselves as being completely and utterly incompetent.

What they have shown, however, is that they will always remain a threat and they have shown their desperation to take control, which makes them even more dangerous.

These are people who are willing to burn down the whole house if they do not win.

Consider what they have just done...

Turnbull was ahead on preferred Prime Minister in the polls. It was the LNP that was on the nose with voters.

They presented Peter Dutton as an alternative to Turnbull, who was popular across party lines.. Peter Dutton, the man hated by the country second to Tony Abbott.. I mean really? It was obvious that Dutton was Abbott's stepping stone. Because it would not have been a good look for Abbott to challenge Turnbull, so Dutton was the patsy who would do it, then Abbott would roll him as well and then take over. Remember, Abbott had clearly said that the aim was to control the government, to that end, this won't stop. The snag, however, is that they have shown just how goddamn stupid, craven and crazy they actually are and how incompetent they are.

Will the far right continue to gain support? Only if others remain silent..

Remember how in the last few months, Peter Dutton and the dickwads in right wing media had been drumming up a false emergency about African gangs in Victoria? How despite all evidence that this was not as much of a crisis Dutton and the far right were painting it to be, Dutton just kept going on and on about it? They were creating a crisis, led by Dutton, to try to draw voters in, to show just how they, the far right "conservatives" in the party, would be the only ones to deal with it. The African gangs, was their 'children overboard'.. But what was shocking during the whole thing, no one from Turnbull's camp tried to correct them or play it down. And that's the craven nature of the entire party. They all thought that the false narrative the far right were pushing would benefit them as well. What they failed to notice or realise was that the far right were using that and setting up that false narrative to further their own agenda within the party.

Energy security, immigration, refugees, climate change, drought, Barrier reef degradation etc all seriously scary issues, tend to promote support further towards the right as people seek what they may perceive as stronger leadership.

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Immigration is the only thing they are concerned with on that list.

Remember, these morons do not believe in climate change, do not care about refugees, do not care about the reef, only care about energy security and the cost for votes.. If they cared about the drought, they would have provided drought relief much sooner instead of dragging their feet. They only started caring about it because an election is looming.

Having said that, Bill is infinitely better than anyone the conservatives could put forward at the moment and given the fact that the Australian voting public have now seen the far right rot that will go to in the Liberal Party. They won't be living that down for a long time.

From the right wing conservatives POV, yes, I think you are correct but from the general population of Australia I think there are more concerns than just immigration.
The current drought effecting Eastern Australia has major devastation potential. Keeping in mind that we are supposedly still in Winter with the high possibility of an extreme Summer on the way.
Energy security issues have been head lines for months, with major grid outages forecast for this Summer 2018/19. (not to mention higher energy costs) and so on...

All in all one could say that any government has it's work cut out for it...
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To me there is no doubt that Dutton and Abbot want to essentially see a return to the white Australia immigration policy or something very similar. To protect the Anglo/Irish/European dominance of Australian culture.
It appears that white suprem-ism is alive and well in the LNP coalition and we will probably see the push in this direction gaining momentum as people trend more to the right as people facing crisis tend to do.
Just thoughts...

From the right wing conservatives POV, yes, I think you are correct but from the general population of Australia I think there are more concerns than just immigration.
The current drought effecting Eastern Australia has major devastation potential. Keeping in mind that we are supposedly still in Winter with the high possibility of an extreme Summer on the way.
Energy security issues have been head lines for months, with major grid outages forecast for this Summer 2018/19. (not to mention higher energy costs) and so on...

All in all one could say that any government has it's work cut out for it...
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To me there is no doubt that Dutton and Abbot want to essentially see a return to the white Australia immigration policy or something very similar. To protect the Anglo/Irish/European dominance of Australian culture.
It appears that white suprem-ism is alive and well in the LNP coalition and we will probably see the push in this direction gaining momentum as people trend more to the right as people facing crisis tend to do.
Just thoughts...

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electric car bans ?

the aussie super scheme was a break through in socialism.
the lack of state owned electricity production is making a fire sale to big busines to hold the country to ransom.

how many aussie house holds could have had solar installed by now ?

mass building of underground aquifas...

these are visionary future concepts that require yester years technology

it is just bullshit politics games of power and facism that are holding the country back.

now the no-mans-land is rising up as the normal urban reality.
this will fuel extremism. undermine democracy and set the citizens against the government while turning a thriving economy into monopolies controlled by special interets.

it is like the eventual worst end of US capitalism.

but it is entirely preventable with technology that has been around for years.

the Aussie government could buy the chunnel drillers and be drilling massive tunnels for water aquifas which will fill with billions of dollars worth of free money/water.

un like the usa where such things are impossible under their fractured system of ecconomy, aussie stands in a unique position of wealth and land to achieve such a thing.

To me there is no doubt that Dutton and Abbot want to essentially see a return to the white Australia immigration policy or something very similar. To protect the Anglo/Irish/European dominance of Australian culture.
It appears that white suprem-ism is alive and well in the LNP coalition and we will probably see the push in this direction gaining momentum as people trend more to the right as people facing crisis tend to do.
Just thoughts...

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The far right have been trying to push this ideal of an emergency regarding immigration, such as the whole African gangs debacle.

It will gain momentum if the media starts doing its work and starts actually fact-checking. There's a reason why so many of them avoid journalists like Leigh Sales, for example.

They have been trying to push a white Australia policy in regards to immigration for a while now. Pauline Hanson's rise years ago, saw them view those voters as untapped potential. They have been trying to drag the LNP to the far right for years. This past week was the first time they tried to bare their teeth.

"If he leaves it several weeks, it will be too late in the cycle to have a by-election, especially when we remember that voters in Wentworth already have to vote twice in the first six months of next year," he said.​

I don't think he will, but this is how tenuous it is for the LNP and the Coalition.

The far right never thought it through properly. They were only intent on revenge.